Pete Marocco, the executive director of Dallas HERO, and his wife, Merritt Corrigan Marocco, have been accused by citizen investigators of entering the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection. A group of semi-anonymous, volunteer sleuths that has become known as the Sedition Hunters identified the couple by scouring social media, video footage, and by using facial recognition software, among other tools that have helped them identify more than 1,000 rioters. Sedition Hunters’ work has been highlighted in national media such as PBS Newshour and the Washington Post, as well as in the book Sedition Hunters: How January 6 Broke the Justice System, by NBC News justice reporter Ryan J. Reilly.
Marocco is the face of the effort to change Dallas’ city charter by way of three amendments—S, T, and U—that would require the city manager to allocate half of all new future revenue to hire police and fund the pension; forces the city to waive its governmental immunity, opening it up to lawsuits from residents; and ties the city manager’s employment to a resident survey.
A Sedition Hunter volunteer named Sandy—an alias she uses to protect her identity—says Marocco and his wife were first identified in early 2023 by her group, who provided a tip to the FBI. Neither Marocco nor his wife has been charged with a crime. “I was waiting for them to be arrested, or at least to find some charging documents before I released it,” Sandy told me on the phone tonight. “But we’re coming close to an election here, and it felt like it needed to go out.”
Sandy published the investigation on her X page on Monday afternoon. The government is on the clock; the five-year statute of limitation for Capitol trespassers expires January 6, 2026. Prior to posting, she said, she was unaware of Marocco’s work in Dallas and the HERO charter amendments.
Reached by email, Marocco did not address whether he and his wife are in the Capitol footage. He sent the following: “Petty smear tactics and desperate personal attacks by politicians with no solutions have no bearing on the urgency of voting in these charter amendments from 170,000 Dallas citizens for more accountability and public safety. Our commitment to strengthening our city through the will of the people is resolute.”
Sandy posted images of Pete Marocco allegedly wearing a navy blue Make America Great Again hat, a red face covering, and teal sneakers both inside and outside the Capitol. (“He’s got those teal blue shoes that nobody at the Capitol has on except for this guy,” Sandy wrote.) Merritt Marocco wore a white MAGA hat and a red face covering. Sandy says footage from a November 14 rally in Washington, D.C., also captured the couple, which helped the software identify them. Pete Marocco wore those same sneakers during the November rally and the January Capitol riot, Sandy said. While they each wore face coverings during January 6, they pulled them down during the November rally and Pete also showed his face outside the Capitol.
The software, called PimEyes, allows users to upload a photo then searches the internet to find other photos of the individuals. New York Times reporters described in 2021 how effective the software was when they tested it with photographs of themselves.
Sandy said Merritt Marocco was identified by the shape of her earlobes and the pearl earrings she wore both days. “It’s a fingerprint, you know?” she said of the earlobes. “Are the lobes attached? What size is the keyhole?” Merritt also had the same phone and protective case during both days.
Sandy later posted video footage that appears to show the couple entering the Capitol corridor near the U.S. Senate chambers through a window and waving others inside. Sandy said the footage and images are sourced from Getty Images, various livestreams of the day’s events, and video from the U.S. Capitol released at the behest of the Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight.
“On January 6, they both had their facemasks on, so it was hard to try and figure out who they were,” Sandy told me. “So we start tracing steps backwards through footage and eventually I got a good face shot where he looks straight at the camera. When I ran through PimEyes, it pops up that it’s this guy. That’s kind of a big deal. Going through more footage, finding him in November at the previous rally, it made it clear who his companion was because in those images she had her facemask off.”
The Maroccos are both former Trump appointees. Pete Marocco was hired by the Trump administration in July 2020 to oversee the conflict prevention bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development. According to a Foreign Policy story from that September, he attempted to divert money from programs “designed to help countries such as Bosnia and Ukraine survive transitions to democracy” in favor of initiatives that protected Christian minorities abroad.
“Marocco’s effort to rewrite the bureau’s mandate and slash its overall funding not only threatens to hamstring the new bureau’s operations, former officials say, but it could put USAID on a collision course with leading Democrats and Republicans in Congress who helped drive the creation of the conflict prevention bureau to nurture delicate political transitions,” the magazine reported.
He also worked for stints in the federal departments of Commerce and State. His wife, Merritt, was also a Trump appointee to the United States Agency for International Development. She left her post after her homophobic online comments surfaced that said America was a “homo-empire” that promoted a “tyrannical LGBT agenda,” according to reporting from ProPublica.
In Dallas, Pete Marocco has emerged as the leader of the Dallas HERO effort, which secured enough signatures to force changes to the charter onto the November ballot. He has debated those who oppose the three amendments; most frequently, and recently, his opponent has been former Mayor Tom Leppert. He has presented the effort as a nonpartisan, people-powered push to hold City Hall and its leaders to account.
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